A federal judge has put on hold a suit filed by the Gardendale Board of Education seeking a court order directing the Jefferson County Board of Education to turn over Gardendale High School and the other county schools in the Gardendale city limits.

Gardendale intends to begin operation as an independent school system this summer.

In an order issued Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Madeline Hughes Haikala put a hold on Gardendale's suit, which was filed Tuesday in Jefferson County Circuit Court, until the parties could appear before her in a hearing March 24 hearing.

Haikala's order is part of a 50-year-old schools desegregation case called Stout vs. Jefferson County Board of Education. Due to the Stout case, the federal court has jurisdiction over school systems separating from Jefferson County.

In her order, Judge Haikala seemed critical of Gardendale's decision to sue Jefferson County in state court over the separation. She mentions an order called the Singleton order, which states the federal court will have jurisdiction over separate school systems in Jefferson County. She noted that the Gardendale did not reference that order in its state court suit, though its lawyers are aware of the Singleton order and did reference it in a filing in the federal Stout case last week.

Haikala also wrote that school systems must comply "in good faith" with the desegregation decree, and ordered that Gardendale be prepared to explain how its suit in state court is in compliance:

"At the hearing on March 24, 2015, Gardendale shall be prepared to discuss how the state court complaint evinces good faith compliance with this Court's Singleton order and with the separation discussion during the February 20, 2015 hearing in this matter," Haikala wrote.

Gardendale asked to intervene in the case and be put under the rules of the Stout case, which one of the Gardendale board's attorneys, Giles Perkins, called "a necessary step to our opening in the fall."

Haikala granted Gardendale's request to intervene in her order Wednesday.